DORETTA BONNER
DORETTA BONNER…
worked in television broadcasting for 14 years, working in Los Angeles and for the San Francisco CBS affiliate. Most of her professional career was spent as a video producer at Oracle Corporation. There she produced videos and created productions for online use, product marketing launches and customer success stories.
Doretta pursued her passion for photography by starting a photography business, which she still enjoys today. In addition to her service on The Samburu Project board, Doretta volunteers as an event photographer and is on the fundraising committee for the San Francisiso 49ers Academy, a school located in East Palo Alto which provides high level education to at risk youths.
Doretta serves on the board of directors for Community Ice Skating Association, a nonprofit in Palo Alto, CA. She also volunteers in her local community, working on the local schools fundraising & auction committee, and is on the board of the Woodside Fire Protection District where she works on various fundraising initiatives. She first learned about The Samburu Project in 2009. Since then, Doretta has been responsible for the implementation of 9 annual "Walk for Water" events involving the children and community of Woodside, CA. The 11 walkathons have raised enough funds to drill 11 "Woodside Wishing Wells" in the Samburu region of Kenya. Having visited Kenya 21 years ago, Doretta returned in 2018 to visit Samburu and experienced first hand the wells sponsored by the Woodside community.
Doretta received a B.A in English from UC Santa Barbara and attended San Francisco State in Broadcasting.
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"My daughter and I had the good fortune to visit Samburu in the summer of 2018. We visited wells communities and schools and met so many people. They were all so grateful that we had made this long journey to meet them and for what we had done for them. Their lives literally revolve around these wells, of course out of survival but also as a social gathering place. To see these wells first hand was truly beautiful. To see the locals lining up with their friends, their children, their community, all patiently waiting with their big yellow jerry cans - an experience I will never forget.
It was a moving experience to visit wells for which our doors here in America have worked so hard to raise money for and incredibly powerful to meet these people and understand how we are changing their lives by providing the most basic human necessity - clean water.”